


Ghosts of Memory

by eternaleponine



Series: The 100 Clexa Reunion [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:06:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As winter approaches, Lexa tries to convince Clarke that she needs a better plan than wandering on her own.  This leads to a conversation that neither of them ever expected to be having, about the things that haunt Lexa. </p><p>Follows <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/3711562">Burn Me With Fire, Drown Me With Rain</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of Memory

Clarke woke to find Lexa had put something on the fire to cook. Her stomach growled, despite the fact that the commander's arrival had left her better fed than she had been in some time. It had still been a while since she'd had meat; her own hunting skills were primitive at best, and bordering on disastrous. 

"I'll go get water," she said, and untangled herself from the blanket that she'd wrapped up in, shivering despite it and the tent that was meant to protect her, and the fire. She'd thought of asking Lexa to join her, in the darkest hours of the night when the cold seemed to settle into her bones and deeper, in her soul, so that every face of every person whose life she'd taken rose up to haunt her, but she hadn't. She'd stayed huddled in the dubious protection of her woolen cocoon, and Lexa had stayed up keeping watch.

"Eat," Lexa said when she got back, but it was an offer, not a command. "We need to talk about what happens next."

"What do you mean?" Clarke asked, then took a bite of the... rabbit, she thought, but she could be wrong... meat, in any case, and felt the grease and other juices drip down her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. 

"You can't stay out here," Lexa said. "Not forever."

"I've done all right," Clarke said.

"You have," Lexa agreed. "But it's getting colder. Winter here is not as bad as it is in the Ice Nation, or in other places, but it still gets cold, and the days get shorter, the nights longer and darker, and some animals go to ground and stay there for the duration, but not all. Not nearly all. Those that don't get hungrier, more desperate. You have to sleep sometimes, and then you will be vulnerable."

 _And I won't be here to watch over you._ That was what she was really saying, despite the fact that less than a day ago she'd told Clarke that she wouldn't leave her again. Clarke had known even when Lexa was saying the words that she didn't, couldn't, mean them. She still had her people to look after, to lead, and that didn't change just because she'd decided to listen to her heart for a little while. 

"So what do you think I should do?" Clarke asked. Because she couldn't imagine that Lexa was saying all of this without having already decided on what the best course of action was. She was a leader, after all, and a smart one. 

"I think you should come with me to Polis," Lexa said. "You will be safe there."

Clarke snorted. "Safe. Because I'm so popular with your people."

Lexa gave her a level look. "You may be surprised."

"I killed 300 of your warriors," Clarke said. "Burned them to death."

Lexa's eyelids lowered, the barest hint of a nod, acknowledging that what she'd said was true. "You also defeated the Mountain Men," she said. "I made a deal with them, to get my people back, to save all of the lives that might have been lost if we'd gone to war with them. I thought... I feared... that that would be the end of the Sky People, because you were not willing to do what needed to be done, what I proposed early on and which you said you would not do. But then you did it. Now the Mountain Men are gone, and my people will never be turned into Reapers again. Those who were are recovering. You... you're a hero, Clarke. Even to my people."

Clarke blinked, trying to take it in, trying to read Lexa's expression. There was a slight halt in her voice, breaking the words up like they were hard for her to say, and maybe they were. Because Clarke had wiped out their mutual enemy completely, and Lexa had left them there, a continued threat despite the deal that had been made. 

Which made Clarke wonder if Lexa was even still their leader. Was she able to be here, to be away from her people for a day... more than a day now... because they no longer looked to her? Was she an exile, too?

But no, that couldn't be, or Lexa woudn't be offering to bring her back to Polis. Still, it was an unsettling thought, that she might actually be welcome among the Grounders. That she might have a place there, when she didn't feel like she did, like she ever could, with her own people. 

It wasn't true, of course. She knew it wasn't true. They would welcome her back with open arms, because she was their savior. But she didn't _want_ to be their savior, and some of them (Jasper) would always look at her and see a murderer. Even if there were no good guys in this war, and even if none of the Mountain Men, not even the children, had been truly innocent. The children wouldn't have known, of course, that their lives on the ground were at the cost of someone else's life, but it would still have been true. And even the youngest of them had likely had treatments with Grounder (they called them Outsiders) blood, whether they knew that was what was happening or not.

She'd made a choice, and she had to live with the consequences (both real and possibly largely imagined) and part of that was that she didn't want to be back among her people. Not yet, at least. 

But Lexa was probably right. There was a very good chance that she couldn't make it out here on her own, especially as the nights grew longer. Still, the Grounder capital? Was that really the answer? Was it even really a choice?

"You can't guarantee my safety," Clarke said. 

Lexa's eyebrows went up. "I am the commander," she said. "If they attack you, they attack me."

Clarke had seen that in action, with Quint. He'd tried to kill her, and when she wouldn't take her revenge, Lexa had taken it for her, leaving him to die a brutal, gruesome death at the hands of a rampaging gorilla. Lexa had called it weakness at the time, and maybe it had been. But how many more were there like him? How many more might not be so quick to forgive, so practical in their thinking as Lexa was?

"So as long as I'm with you, I'm safe?" 

"Yes."

"And if I don't want to be with you all the time?"

"You are still there at my request, and under my protection," Lexa said. "You will be safe."

"Like Costia was safe?"

Clarke regretted the words as soon as she said them. They were cruel, and that was one thing she'd tried to never be, even in a world that sometimes felt like it demanded it. But here Lexa was trying to help, and she'd gone after her with the one thing that she knew would cut her, that would tear open wounds that she claimed were closed, but had left scars that still ached. 

The silence hung between them, and Clarke's gaze shifted between Lexa's face, which had shown a flicker of pain, then a flash of betrayal, before settling into a careful mask, and her hands, which were still and empty but which might reach for a weapon at any second, and probably faster than Clarke could get her gun. 

The only sound was the nearby stream and the birds in the trees, the crackle of the fire that could not warm them as they sat, frozen. 

"You are not like Costia," Lexa said finally, and her voice was a thick rasp. 

"You treat me like I am," Clarke said, and again wished she'd kept her mouth shut, because what did she know about how Lexa had treated her first – and only (until now?) – love? 

"No," Lexa said. "You are..." She took a breath and it shook as she let it out, and Clarke was suddenly possessed with the urge to go to her, to put her arms around her and tell her that it was all right, that she was sorry, that Lexa didn't have to try to explain.

But she didn't move. She wanted to know, even though she could see that Lexa was bleeding on the inside, figuratively, as she dragged up the words. "You are not Costia."

"What was she like?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa shook her head, and Clarke would have accepted the refusal, but a second later she started to speak again. "She was young, like I was young, but... but not like I was young, because I wasn't, really. I was Heda, newly Heda, and lost in the role, and... I was lonely, I think, but... it was more than that. I wasn't only trying to fill a void. It wasn't about finding _anyone_. She was... she felt right."

Clarke nodded, afraid that saying anything would make Lexa stop, and that the words wouldn't start again. She was staring off into the distance, into the trees, but Clarke didn't think that she really saw anything except the past playing like a movie only she could see.

"I think Anya tried to warn me," she said after a moment. "I think she tried to tell me that it was not wise, but I didn't listen, like you don't listen when someone who has told you all along what to do or not to do, what is good for you and what isn't, tells you something that you don't want to hear. I think you know." She looked at Clarke then, and it felt less like she was coming back into the here and now, and more like she was dragging Clarke down with her into the past. 

"Like when your parents tell you – or don't tell you, but suggest that maybe something isn't the best idea, and if they hadn't said anything maybe you would have decided differently but now that they've said, or implied not to do a thing, you're going to do it. Not to spite them, but just to... show that you're independent of them. Or something."

The corner of Lexa's mouth quirked up into the faintest hint of a smile, and she gave that tiny nod. "Something like that, yes. I wanted something, and being told that I shouldn't have it only made me want it more. And there was a little of me, I think, that thought, 'I am Heda now, I don't have to listen to you.' Even though she had never led me wrong, in all of the years that she had been my mentor."

"Was it a long time?"

Lexa considered, then shrugged. "Long enough."

"What happened to your parents?" Clarke asked. "Do you just get to a certain age and then decide that you're going to become a warrior, and find a mentor and... walk away from your family?"

"You don't walk away," Lexa said. "You don't have to. But it's part of growing up. For me, though, my parents were dead. My father killed by Reapers, my mother captured by the Mountain Men." Her eyes went cold, hard, distant. "Anya took me in after that. She saw something in me." She shrugged again, blinking back the past. "She taught me how to fight, how to be strong, how to keep going even in the face of pain. She taught me well."

Clarke shifted, took another bite of her food now that it was cool enough not to burn her tongue. "Costia?" she prompted, when the silence felt like it might be settling again for good.

"She was... beautiful," Lexa said. "That was what I noticed first, but she was also strong, and smart, and she smiled and laughed a lot. That isn't something that is common with us, as I'm sure you can imagine." That hint of a smile again. "She was everything that I was not, it seemed like, and I wanted... not to possess it. But to hold it. And in time I did, and I loved her with all that I was. I didn't hold back. Neither did she, because we were young and we didn't know better. And it became known, and it made her a weapon that could be used against me."

Clarke knew the rest of the story, and she wasn't about to ask for further details. Her curiosity wasn't any reason for Lexa to have to relive that, any more than she would want to have to relive Finn's death. They both had the blood of their lovers on their hands, even if Lexa hadn't actually been the one to strike the final blow. It was still her fault, for being who she was, and Costia had been innocent of anything but love. At least Finn...

She shuddered, and the movement drew Lexa's gaze, calm and fixed. "Are you cold?"

She shook her head, because getting closer to the fire would do nothing to push back the chill that she felt. It went too deep, and felt like icy teeth gnawing her bones. But Lexa stood anyway, and peeled off the coat that she wore, and closed the space between them, wrapping it around Clarke. It was fur-lined and soaked in the warmth of Lexa's skin, and the scent of her was like a sharp, earthy perfume that settled around her.

Lexa picked up Clarke's blanket and wrapped it around herself, careful not to block her ability to grab her sword if it became necessary. "You were right," she said after a moment. "You said that I was haunted by her, and you're right. Sometimes... I think I still feel her in my arms when I am not quite asleep and not quite awake, and it's real, for a moment it's real, except I know that it's not."

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "That must be awful."

"It is," Lexa said. "For a time, I tried to hold on to those moments, tried to imagine that they were real, but it only made it hurt worse. So I told myself it was weakness, and I made myself..." 

_Forget_ , Clarke thought, but obviously she hadn't forgotten. "Stop caring?" she filled in, because that was what Lexa had told her before.

"I tried," Lexa said. "I thought I had. I thought I'd won, that I'd turned off that part of myself, that it was weakness that I was abandoning, that I was strong now, because if I didn't care, then no one could be used against me. It was safer, for me and for those who might matter to me." She looked at Clarke, and her expression was a mix of anger and admiration. "Then you came."

"It wasn't my choice," Clarke said. "We—"

"It doesn't matter if you chose it or not. It doesn't change that you came, and you changed everything. You changed my people's world. You changed mine. You changed _me_ , and I want to hate you for it, I want to hate you for making me weak again, for pointing out that I was not as strong as I thought. You are not Costia. You are not anything like Costia."

There was more to it than that, more that Lexa wasn't saying, wearing that mask of pain and rage that she knew no one was ever supposed to see. Clarke could see the tears in her eyes, could see her trying to swallow the lump in her throat, and she wanted to reach out and _that_ was weakness, by Lexa's way of reckoning, and maybe she should have listened harder to what the commander was trying to tell her back when they'd first met, about hardening her heart, hardening herself...

But it wasn't possible, was it? Here was the commander, cold and hard and practical, heartless... and crying. For love that she'd lost, by choice and not by choice... but had she really had a choice? The lives of her people, or her heart? Was that really a choice?

_What did you do?_

_What you would have done._

She wasn't wrong. Clarke knew now she wasn't wrong. If she'd been in Lexa's place, if she'd been given the same choice... "What am I like, Lexa?" she asked. 

"You are like a fly, buzzing around the ear," Lexa said. "You are like the itch in the middle of your back that can't be reached." She almost smiled. "With Costia... we could pretend that we were equal when we were together, but we weren't. We never could be. I was Heda, and she was one of my people, and that would always be there between us. She was my responsibility, along with everyone else _kom Trikru_. She was mine to protect, and watch over, and that was not something that she could do for me. Nor would I have asked her to. There were always secrets between us, always things that I could not say to her, always things that she could not understand because I could not let her understand. Because there was always the chance that what did happen would happen, and it was best if she didn't know too much."

She pulled the blanket tighter around herself, and Clarke pulled the coat closed in the front in response. She watched as Lexa struggled to get her breathing back under control, waited to see if she would continue. "You are not one of my people. You are... my equal. You challenge me in ways that my people would never dare to. You aren't afraid of me, you don't owe me any respect, and you only give it to me when I earn it. And that makes me respect you more. You woke up feelings in me that I had tried to put to rest, that I had tried to forget. I built up walls around my heart and you broke them all down, I think without even knowing that that's what you were doing. You tore me open and got inside and lodged there, and that was never your intention, I know that, but it happened nonetheless, and..."

The word was left hanging, the unfinished statement, the unanswered (and maybe unanswerable) question mark that the kiss had left in its wake. 

_Not yet,_ Clarke had said, and that hadn't changed... had it? But the truth was that Lexa had woken up something inside of her, too, or offered a solution to a problem that she hadn't been able to articulate, or... She didn't even know. There was a hunger in her that she'd tried to sate with Finn and failed, a need for a connection to someone who could understand, but he never could. No one could. No one knew what it was like to be forced into a position she'd never been prepared for, to be looked to as a leader when she had no idea what she was doing, to have everyone expect her to have the answers when she had none.

Lexa understood. She'd been there once herself, maybe a little more prepared but Clarke suspected not much, and she understood about making hard choices; she'd been the one who tried to prepare Clarke for the fact that eventually she would have to. She understood about having to bear the weight of it all alone, that it was a burden that they had to carry so that their people didn't have to. 

She understood. Not perfectly, maybe, but no one was perfect. They were two different people from two different worlds, but if there was anyone on any world who could offer her some kind of understanding, some kind of comfort (not the absolution that Bellamy had offered – she could appreciate the sentiment but also knew deep down that it was empty) it was Lexa.

"We should get moving," she said, pushing herself to standing because she couldn't be still anymore, couldn't just sit with the weight of the conversation that she'd never meant to start having, and the answers to questions she'd never thought she would ask and had assumed would never be answered. 

"Where are we going?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke opened her mouth, then closed it. For a second she'd had an answer, but the word dried up on her tongue and she couldn't push it past her teeth. "Do your people know where you are?"

Lexa shrugged. "It was one of my warriors who told me where to find you," she said. "At least they gave me an idea. If I am gone too long, it is likely that they will tell someone, and then they will come looking for me."

"How long?" Clarke asked.

"A day. Maybe two."

"From when you left, or from now?"

"From now," Lexa replied, looking up at her, her gaze steady. "Why?"

"I just... wondered," Clarke said. _I just wanted to know how long I have, how long_ we _have before someone comes looking, before the world closes in around us like a noose and chokes the life out of whatever this is._

"So where are we going, Clarke of the Sky People?" Lexa asked. 

"We're not going anywhere," Clarke said, trying to make her voice – and heart – hard. She couldn't look at Lexa, and that was telling, and she didn't think that the Grounder girl wouldn't notice. "You are going back to your people before they come looking for you. They need their commander."

"What about your people?" Lexa asked. "You are their leader; do you think that they need you less?"

"I think that they can manage without me," Clarke said. "I think that they have to. I can't be their leader right now."

"Why not?"

Lexa's voice was close, and how had she moved so quickly and quietly that Clarke hadn't even noticed her doing it? She was close enough now to be a threat, close enough that Clarke could feel the warmth of her skin radiating in waves. Clarke shivered. 

"Why not?" Lexa repeated. 

Clarke turned and found herself face to face with Lexa, so close it made her chest tighten, not because she was afraid that Lexa would hurt her, but because she was afraid that she wouldn't. That she was this close for another reason, a reason that would hurt more than any physical pain ever could, if it was given and taken away again.

"Because when I look at them, all I can see is what I had to do to get them there," she said. "When I look at them, I see their flesh and blood faces, and behind them I see the skulls of all of those whose lives I have – directly or indirectly – taken."

Lexa nodded. "It gets better," she said.

"Does it?" Clarke asked. "Really? Because I'm not sure I _want_ it to get better. I don't think I want to get to a point where death is easy."

"It's not easy," Lexa said. "It's never easy. But... it gets to a point where you don't feel like it is killing you, or that you wish that it would."

Clarke looked at her, studied her face, wondered if she meant what she said, if she had gotten to the point at some point in the past where she just wanted it all to end. Not that she wanted to die – if she really wanted that, it could be arranged easily enough – but it would be nice if, somehow, just for a little while, it could all just... stop. 

"Lexa?"

"Clarke."

"When you look at me... do you see her?"

Lexa blinked, and for a second Clarke thought that she would step back, that she would turn away, that she would leave and this time she wouldn't return. Then, slowly, she shook her head. "No," she said, her voice so soft it almost disappeared into the sound of the stream. "No. When I look at you, I see... only you."

"Because I'm not her."

"I know." Lexa took Clarke's hand, lifted it, placed it on her chest and held it there. "And I am not him."

Clarke could feel Lexa's heart pounding under her palm, and her fingers curled, like she could reach through skin and bone and touch it there. To what end? To tear it out and stomp on it? To cast it into the fire and watch it burn?

Or to hold it safe, to fill in the cracks and mend the tears?

"Lexa... if I wanted to kiss you, would you let me?"

Clarke felt her tense, but still, she didn't move away. She scarcely moved at all, even to breathe. "You are asking the wrong question, Clarke."

"What is the right question?"

"The right question is, 'If I kissed you now, would you let me go?'"

Clarke felt her eyes prick with tears, and she blinked hard. "Would you?"

"No."

She looked up, met Lexa's eyes. "Would you?"

Lexa's eyelids lowered, a nod without even the slightest movement of her head, but it was all that Clarke needed. 

This time the kiss was not gentle. It was not soft, or uncertain. It was a clash of lips and tongue and teeth, a kiss that asked for promises, that made demands. Their bodies crashed into each other and they yanked and pulled, as if maybe they could press hard enough to crawl inside each other and find whatever it was they were seeking there. 

Clarke kissed Lexa until she was breathless, until she was dizzy with it, her body screaming for more air than she could take in, but she was afraid to stop, afraid to let it end, afraid to let go because if she did, what then? What would become of them then, in this world that demanded cruelty and sacrifice and left no room for anything more, anything better.

_Maybe life should be about more than just surviving. Don't we deserve better than that?_

_Maybe we do._

It was Lexa who pulled away this time, but her fingers still dug into Clarke's back, and she looked at her, searching her eyes for answers that Clarke didn't have... except maybe she did. Maybe this was the answer.

But she needed to be alone. Didn't she? She needed to get over this, or through it, and she needed to do that on her own. She had given too much to other people; she needed time and space to just be herself. Didn't she?

Except... was that really how it worked? Was that how it _should_ work? Because look at Lexa. Lexa, who was alone, more alone than Clarke had ever imagined a person surrounded by people who looked to her constantly for guidance could be. And where had it gotten her? 

They were not so different. They had made impossible choices. They had sacrificed themselves to spare others. They were leaders whether they wanted to be or not, whether they were prepared to be or not. They were responsible for their people, and who was responsible for them? Who looked after them, when they were falling apart? Clarke had her mother, but she didn't understand. She thought she did, maybe, but she didn't. She couldn't. And Lexa had no one. 

Going back wasn't the answer. Wandering on her own had felt like it was, but it wasn't going to work long term. She didn't know enough, and she didn't have enough time to learn before winter came and made everything infinitely harder. 

This – whatever this was – wouldn't fix everything. It might not fix anything at all. But even as she stood there with Lexa's arms still around her, her fingers tangled in the other girl's hair, she couldn't help thinking that maybe it could help. Like a parent kissing a child's wound, it didn't make it all better, but it could help ease the sting.

"Ask me again," Clarke said.

"Ask you what?"

"Ask me what you asked me before the battle."

Lexa's forehead furrowed, and for a second Clarke thought maybe she had forgotten. But she hadn't, because finally she said, "What will you do when it's over?"

"I have no idea," Clarke answered.

"Well, what do you want?"

But the script was wrong now, and Clarke's answer had changed, or was changing as she watched hope begin to light up in the depths of Lexa's eyes, hope that had been absent since she'd turned back up in Clarke's life. She didn't know what to say.

Lexa understood. Somehow, she understood. "You should come with me to the capital."

Clarke nodded, because her throat was suddenly tight, and she buried her face against Lexa's shoulder and felt the grounder's arms close around her, felt her own breath hitch and Lexa's respond, and they clung to each other because it felt like the end of the world again and this might be the only chance they had, and cried.


End file.
